(16+) Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, PC. Out 2014

Six years in the making and without a release date any more specific than 2014, Destiny's developer Bungie is taking its time.

Then again, the talent behind Halo, the Xbox system's defining series, knows the value of ensuring a title is fully cooked before its launch.

And make no mistake, the company - now working from within the deep pockets of Call of Duty's Activision - intends its forthcoming title to go the distance.

Bungie's chief operating officer Pete Parsons described the game to us as a piece of "big entertainment" that the studio hoped would sit alongside Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

"We're in it for the long run," he said. "We want to unpack the universe over the course of a decade."

Details of that universe are still thin on the ground, but from E3 we know that this is a futuristic shooter set 700 years in the future on a post-apocalyptic planet, in which the last remaining humans must hold back an alien invasion.

How the story unfolds is yet to be seen, but what's clear already is that it's a game that blurs the lines between single-player campaign and cooperative multiplayer in what the company is referring to as a "sharedworld shooter".

In footage of the game shown during Sony's reveal of its forthcoming PlayStation 4 console, we saw futuristic soldiers - known as Guardians - working with one another to complete objectives.

Players pass between areas intended just for them and their small clutch of friends into sprawling plains where huge numbers of gamers can join to fight larger foes together.

Building on Halo's endlessly robust multiplayer code, Destiny has been put together with an entirely new game engine that allows for an unprecedented level of detail.

The challenge now is for the team to fill this beautiful, forsaken world with stories and experiences to match.

Bungie, meanwhile, is entirely confident. "I haven't felt this excited since we made the first Halo," said Parsons.